lost connection to device + premiere pro

[graphixgurl]

Hi Everyone,
I know a few people have mentioned my problem briefly but there doesn't seem to be an answer for the issue or more of an in-depth idea on how to fix this. Basically I am trying to use Premiere Pro to capture video from my old school Sony TRV730.

I have captured video before so I don't think it's quite a "what does this window do?" newbie situation but maybe I am doing something wrong in the settings or something.

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 9300 with a 4 pin firewire input so I went ahead and picked up a cable earlier today. I hooked the cable up to my camcorder and laptop, put the camera in playback mode and started Premiere. Once I got into Premiere I was able to open the capture window and control the camera through Premiere without any issues so it does appear to see the device ok. Once I try to record the footage (either by pressing play and then record OR by trying to set in and out points and recording the clip) the capture window immediately goes black in the preview area and I get the message "lost connection to device" from Premiere. If I shut off the camera and turn it back on the preview will once again show up in the capture window in Premiere but I get the same results whenever I try to capture.

When I plug in the camcorder Windows gives me a few options including capturing with Premiere and when I tried another of the capture options (doing it with Roxio - not optimal I know) it was able to capture without any issues. I did notice that Windows installed some drivers when I first did it so I don't know if this is an issue with Premiere or not.

In addition, I have a mac at work with Final Cut Express and I was able to successfully capture video after some minor tinkering with the settings (12 bit was messing up my audio, changed to 16 bit) in the camera itself. However this is a personal project and I don't want to have to rely on a work computer.

I know there are some other software options out there that I am willing to try but I would like to be able to capture from within Premiere itself if I can. In the past I have used older versions of Premiere with my camcorder and didn't have this problem that I can remember. I saw a thread about trashing my preferences in Premiere so I will try that. Do I need to try to install some new drivers for either Premiere or the camcorder itself? When I went into the capture settings window I tried to find my camera but I couldn't find the exact model of my Sony camera so I just set it to generic.

I know this is super long but I know details help in these types of cases.

Thanks for your help guys!

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

Did you set it to generic Sony, or just Generic camera?

It may be that your camera not being listed isn't an oversight.

When you digitize fotage from, say, Roxio, can you import that footage into Premiere?

Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[Akribie]

Setting the type of camera is primarily about control, not the video data stream. If you can control the camera, you should be able to record from it.

One useful test would be to try Scenalyzer Live (

http://www.scenalyzer.com)

for capture. The free trial download puts a watermark on the video frames, but is otherwise fully functional. Set it to capture Type 2 DV AVI for compatibility with PPro.

If that works, you know it is a settings issue somewhere for Premiere. If it doesn't, I would suspect your laptop.

On the other hand, given that Scenalyzer is so much better for capturing than Premiere and not very expensive, you might decide to use that for capturing instead, as so many others do already.